Lindsay Lohan Succumbs to Exhaustion and Dehydration, Fans Organize Charity to Provide Abused Celebrities with Water

LOS ANGELES, Calif. (Bennington Vale Evening Transcript) -- Troubled actress Lindsay Lohan again ignited concerns about her health Friday when she was discovered unconscious in the penthouse suite of the Ritz-Carlton Hotel in Marina del Rey, where she had been staying while filming a Lifetime television movie about Elizabeth Taylor. Paramedics rushed to the scene after production workers called, worried that Lohan had taken ill. She was examined but not hospitalized. "Lindsay has been working a grueling schedule for the last couple of days. Last night she worked from 7 p.m. to 8 a.m. She was exhausted and went back to her room to sleep," said the actress' representative Steve Honig. After meeting with Honig, the film's producers, and an inexplicable group of financial people from the studio, the medical technicians attending Lohan pronounced that she -- as so many of Hollywood's overworked celebrities-- had succumbed to "exhaustion and dehydration." This diagnosis, however, left fans outraged. "It's a dangerous and negligent catchall," vented Horace Fofkein, an entertainment blogger. "You'd think with the money these studios pull in, they could afford to give their talent a few hours to sleep...or at least a damn glass of water. It's inhumane." Fofkein has now organized a charity to help collect food, water, and personal assistants to save a growing number of celebrities from certain death at the hands of what he deems "concentration camps with cameras."

Fofkein's To Catch a Falling Star Foundation -- similar in concept to Meals-on-Wheels -- has already collected $2 million in the few days of its operation. The explosive momentum of the organization has also captured the attention of attorneys and representatives from the California Department of Industrial Relations, who've begun investigating a series of possible violations.

"The legal people got involved after our first day of delivery," Fofkein explained. "We arrived on the set of 'Smurfs 2' with obvious concerns for the welfare of Christina Ricci, the female lead. And what did we see? Five gigantic food trucks and an entire spread of tables being serviced by the best caterers in town. Around them were swarming janitors, gaffers, painters, losers from the props department, and all other manner of menial labor. But the actors themselves were trapped on the soundstage without adequate sustenance. The ones locked inside their dressing trailers were being given pills by some unsavory looking types from the neighborhood -- probably sent by the studio to keep the actors awake. We immediately reported it to the state."

But Lohan's is not an isolated incident. The problem, Fofkein illustrated, has been around for years -- and largely ignored by the industry.

"One of the landmark cases involved Martin Lawrence in 1996," Fofkein noted. "They found him wandering a busy LA intersection in a stupor of exhaustion and dehydration. He was waving a loaded gun at passing cars. A lot of people could've died that day, all because some sadistic director prevented Martin from getting enough to drink."

Four years later, an undernourished and sleep-deprived Anne Heche suffered a public meltdown that sparked the end of her relationship with Ellen DeGeneres.

"The effects of Anne's exhaustion were so extreme they literally altered her sexuality and made her hetero again," Fofkein exclaimed, aghast at the magnitude of the condition. "Then she announced that she was God and would be taking everyone to Heaven on her spaceship. Her agent called it temporary mental illness. But it really wasn't. Sure she was hallucinating, but that's no different than thirsting people in the desert seeing mirages. It's the lack of rest and water!"

Other affected celebrities include Tom Jones, Rhianna, Whitney Houston, Courtney Love, and Mariah Carey, who became so delirious she committed to the film 'Glitter.'

"You look at the irreversible damage this kind of abuse does to a person -- like Whitney or Courtney -- and you realize that you have to do something," Fofkein said. "Just like in that poem about the holocaust, when the writer says, 'Then they came for the Jews, and I didn't speak out because I wasn't a Jew. Then they came for me.' If we don't speak out for injustice, nobody will vouch for us either."

Fofkein accused the entire Hollywood system of forcing workers to toil under third-world conditions: "It's supposed to be an entertainment company, not a Joy Division. I'm surprised actors aren't being coerced into prostitution, although I suspect Lindsay may have already faced that degradation. We just hope To Catch a Falling Star can make a difference, raise awareness, and get help to these suffering victims."

A doctor responsible for the medical facilities at Warner Brothers admitted that many stars do suffer from exhaustion and dehydration, but disagreed that management was the cause. He pointed out -- to sharp criticism -- that narcotics and godlike amounts of alcohol can produce the same symptoms.